A county bomb squad dismantled a pipe bomb that a man had discovered under the driver's seat of his car in the Hughes Aircraft Co. parking structure, police said Wednesday. Hughes employee Yasutaka A. Nakamoto, 39, at first thought his car had been burglarized because the window had been broken, Sgt. Andy Gonis said. He then found the device under the seat. A Hughes security agent reported the device to police at about 7 p.m. Tuesday, Police Sgt. Mike McDonough said.

Allen E. Puckett, one of the engineers who after World War II built Los Angeles-based Hughes Aircraft Co. into the nation's leading defense electronics firm - dominant in the markets for air defense, radar systems, tactical missiles and satellites - has died. He was 94. One of the nation's top technologists and defense executives during the Cold War, Puckett died March 31 at his home in Pacific Palisades after suffering a stroke. His wife, Marilyn, confirmed his death. "Allen Puckett was one of the guiding spirits of Hughes Aircraft," said Malcolm Currie, a former deputy defense secretary who later followed in Puckett's footsteps as another president of the company.

Hughes Aircraft Co. said Monday that it plans to sell its Interconnect Systems division in Irvine. The division, which has about 400 employees, makes electronic connection products for military and commercial uses. The business has suffered from a slump in sales during the recession and has cut its Irvine payroll by about 70 people in the past several months. "It is being looked at by several companies," said Richard Dore, spokesman for Hughes.

For the generation that grew up during the Cold War, Hughes was synonymous with aerospace, an industry that flourished and dotted Southern California's landscape. At its height in the mid-1980s, Hughes Aircraft Co., like the industry, was ubiquitous, from Newport Beach to Santa Barbara with sprawling facilities in Culver City, El Segundo and Canoga Park. More than 85,000 worked for the company developing the nation's most advanced military electronics. Despite its ever-presence in the region, not much has been written about the aerospace giant other than as a sideshow to its eccentric founder Howard Hughes.

Hughes Aircraft Co. received a $12.7-million subcontract from Dornier GmbH to supply an air defense system to the German Air Force. Hughes said it will tailor its product, Sentry, to meet the air force's specific requirements.

A cache of documents discovered last week in a second-hand desk that once belonged to the Hughes Aircraft Co. does not contain secret information, according to Hughes spokesman Ray Silvius. Silvius said experts from the company had determined that the materials were either "pure textbook descriptions" or reports on information that was already public knowledge. The FBI also announced that it had determined that the materials were not classified.

Vytautas Cekanauskas, a former Hughes Aircraft electrical engineer who served as honorary consul general of Lithuania in Los Angeles for more than 30 years, has died. He was 80. Cekanauskas died of cancer Nov. 30 at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, said his daughter, Vida Bruozis. The Lithuanian-born Cekanauskas was appointed by the chief of the Lithuanian Diplomatic Service in 1977 and served in the uncompensated position until his death. In 1990, during his tenure, the Baltic republic's legislature declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

Rep. Jane Harman's 1994 campaign for Congress benefited from $21,000 illegally funneled from a Hughes Aircraft Co. fundraising event, but the violation was not deliberate, newly released documents show. The records were made public by the Federal Election Commission for the first time this week, a decade after Harman's opponent in the 1994 race sparked a minor campaign controversy by lodging a complaint with the commission about the fundraiser.

A Florida developer said Friday that it has bought a 41.5-acre site on the old Hughes Aircraft Co. property in Fullerton and will break ground next week on a $46-million shopping mall anchored by a Target Greatland store. Regency Realty Corp., a real estate investment trust in Jacksonville, said it paid $23.4 million to acquire the property, at Malvern Avenue and Gilbert Street, from SunCal Cos. in Anaheim.

William Hohri asked for the name of "one major private pension plan that provides for cost-of-living adjustments" for retirees (letter, Oct. 18). Hughes Aircraft Co.'s plan is one. This includes the time it was part of General Motors Corp. and the time it was part of Raytheon. I checked my records for the last three years and verified that my COLA percentage increases from the Hughes plan have consistently been a little greater than those for my Social Security payments. I've been receiving this kind of benefit treatment from the Hughes plan for nearly 20 years.

Public debate raged into the night Monday as the Fullerton City Council considered whether to approve a sprawling development on the former Hughes Aircraft site. The Amerige Heights complex would include 1,250 homes and a large commercial district on acreage that some residents have long argued is polluted. Several of the estimated 250 people packed into the council chambers and overflowing into the lobby spoke of their fears of contamination.

A Los Angeles race discrimination case that led to an $89.5-million jury award against Hughes Aircraft Co. must be retried, the California Supreme Court decided Monday. The unanimous ruling strongly reaffirmed the broad discretion of trial judges to toss out jury verdicts they believe are not supported by the evidence. The state high court sided with Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Malcolm H.

Hughes Aircraft Fined: A federal judge ordered Hughes Aircraft Co., a subsidiary of General Motors Corp., to pay a $3.5-million fine for conspiring to falsify tests on electronic military components. Hughes and a former supervisor at its microelectronic circuits division in Newport Beach were indicted last December on charges that they faked test results on electronic circuits used in the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18 jet fighters, the Phoenix missile and other systems.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave companies broad control over the handling of their pension funds, even when their employees have contributed to the fund and helped to create a large surplus. In a 9-0 ruling, the justices threw out a lawsuit brought by retirees from Hughes Aircraft Co., who maintained they should share in a $1.2-billion surplus in its pension fund. They complained that Hughes had diverted the money to other purposes, including paying for buyouts to encourage early retirements.

Raytheon Co. is expected to announce a consolidation plan as early as this week that will eliminate an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 jobs at its defense and aerospace operations nationwide, including at the former Hughes Aircraft facility in Fullerton, according to industry and company sources.